In one of his author's notes somewhere, Niven mentions that Sternbach's cover art for Tales of Known Space contains, somewhere, a very tiny Ringworld.
Wil, did you ever find it?
Yeah, but I had to take it to Rick, and have him point it out to me. It's sort of on it's side, if I recall correctly...
I wonder if any studio would make Ringworld, without screwing it up? Because you know what would happen: they'd make the first one, it would be a huge success, then they'd sell the rights for Engineers to Showtime, and it'd become a cheap, late night softcore spin off.
Are you at all disappointed that you didn't actually end up looking like that hunk of steroidal man-meat that Q briefly turned Wesley into in that one episode?
Am I the only person who thought it was weird that Wesley was turned into a blonde-haired, blue-eyed adonis?
I mean, look at me. I'm a scrawny geek, and I'll grow up to be a scrawny geek.
If you decide to read it, do so knowing that it was presented to me as comedy and satire, so I responded in kind.
Apparently, lots of people didn't get the joke, and I've been getting a ton of shit for it.
Re:Ending
on
Review: K-PAX
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
...why is he leaving exactly five earth years after he arrived? Does everyone in the universe schedule their travel based on earth time?
Things like this happen in SF all the time. We would like to stay away from an "Earth-centric" view of things, but the people paying to see this movie are from Earth, and it's easier for them to grasp an Earth year, than it is to grasp a Jovian year, or a k-paxian year. Ultimately, it really doesn't matter to the vast majority of the audience, and, as a filmmaker, you'd rather have your audience ponder your film's (hopefully) deeper meanings, not how long a year was.
Here is a pretty interesting photo tour that was made by some guys who, by their own admission, "violated federal law" to get inside and tour around one of these silos, when it was just a bunch of abandoned cold war concrete. It's nice to compare the this with the eBay photos...makes that 1.5 million opening bid seem a bit more reasonable. Oh, and you'd better hurry...there's only an hour left to bid on it.
Incidentally, I lived in Topeka for some time, and I got to go to one of these abandoned silos, back around 92 or 93...there was a freaky survivalist dude living there, surrounded by all his guns and barrels of water...and I got to go stand where, at one time, there was a ICBM, ready to go...remembering the cold war dominated world that I grew up in, it was very, very surreal.
I should think it'll come as quite a shock to Diane Warren that she's the most hated man in Star Trek
*whew* It's a relief that I won't have to give up my "Most Hated Man In Star Trek" badge, then...it's keeping the table level.
However, if she gets the "Most Hated Person In Star Trek" award, I'll have to give that one up...which is too bad. It's keeping the bees out of my kitchen.
I have always argued that opt-in is the fair way to go. Why should the burden of being left the hell alone fall onto me, the consumer?
And I don't know about you, but when I opt out, I feel like a bit of a heel: "Here's all my information, my email, my address, my phone number...now, please don't use any of this information, dear spammer."
I wonder if the day is not too far off when those of us who have opted out get on a big list of "people who've opted out" and get a mass "So, you like to opt out, eh?" mailing...
The FCC should go with opt in. It's for questions like these that "duh" was invented.
I loved "Enterprise". I loved it so much, I am actually going to write Berman and Braga a note, and tell them how amazing I thought it was...
Strangely, the only thing that I really hated was the theme song...I suspect that the guy who composed that is going to be the new holder of the "Most Hated Man In Star Trek" title...if he calls, I'll hand over the badge to him...I know I have it someplace.
I suggest, to anyone who feels the same way about the theme song, that you turn the volume down, and crank up Pink Floyd's "Learning To Fly". Not only is it a cooler song, but it goes very nicely with the visuals.
Okay, I'm not the most objective individual on this subject, and I really didn't like the direction Trek went after Gene died, and the odds are, if you didn't like Voyager or DS9, you won't like Enterprise, because it's the same creative team.
However, before we premiered Next Generation, we were dismissed pretty much out of hand before anyone had seen a single episode...and we ended up running for 10 years, not sucking most of the time, IMHO.
So I'll be watching, excited as hell that there's new Trek on TV, and hoping against hope that it doesn't suck.
This audio is just amazing...in a week filled with despair and sadness, it's a welcome break to hear something so optimistic and uplifting. It reminds me of this record set I had when I was in college, called "I can hear it now". It was a 3 or 4 LP set of important events that happened in the 60s, narrated by Walter Cronkite. It had the "We choose to go to the moon" speech, the assassination of JFK, MLK, lots of stuff from Vietnam...but the thing that I played over and over again were the recordings from the Apollo missions. Something about that *beep* and the courage in their voices...the sense that I get, just from listening to them talk, was that every one of those men knew they were doing something incredible. I'm really glad this story got posted.
I loved LEGO as a kid. I spent countless hours making computers, houses, all manner of gun, and, of course, the ubiquitous robot.
Now that I have kids of my own, they play with LEGO, and I don't even recognize the toys I grew up with.
I mean, sure, it's cool to have the Star Wars sets and what not, and the little lego men look really cool and all, but where's the creativity? Unless you have serious cash to drop on the Mindstorms, the sets are so specialized that you can only make one thing out of them.
I think that Atollo is a paradigm shift in construction-based toys, returning the focus to the user's creativity, rather than ability to follow diagrams in an instruction book.
The Bad Guys don't play by the rules, anyway.
The government has been foaming at the mouth to install things like Carnivore, implement the DMCA, stop people from having PGP, etc. for years.
Guess what? If the feds backdoor encryption sold here in the US, The Bad Guys will get their encryption elsewhere. The only people who would be effected by these limitations on privacy are people like us, not The Bad Guys.
And, as has been pointed out before, but bears repeating: if laws are made in these emotionally charged times, they will never go away, because the politicians won't want to appear "soft on terrorism" the same way they don't want to appear "soft on drugs".
Katz makes good points, and this tragedy has forever changed our world, but let's hope, as another poster said, that cooler heads prevail.
If you don't like what a radio station is playing, listen to a different station.
This is great in theory. However, in practice, it's not that simple. If you live in a city like Los Angeles, and you prefer "Alternative" music, your choices are KROQ and...KROQ.
But really, "Go W"? Do you have any idea how rediculous that sounds? We'll be lucky if that bastard doesn't round up any person who is a moslem in the US and put them in camps for orderly disposal.
I think that the US people have learned, and will soon have the lesson reinforced, what happens when you elect a president with WEAK foreign experience.
I'm all for rallying around the flag, but I refuse to support this charlatan of a leader.
I couldn't agree with you more. Here's my greatest fear: Resident Bush will see this as an opportunity to look "Presidential", and bomb "Them" back to the stone age, and figure out who "They" are later.
And all these comparisons to Pearl Harbor are just inflammatory. We have NO IDEA who did this, so we have NO IDEA who we should be retaliating against. Let's not lose our heads, people. We can be sure that the US will not let this go unanswered...but "Go W"?! Please.
Alien54 said:"To tell the truth, it would have been better to have a revisit from Harry Mudd, or something"
Harry Mudd was supposed to make an appearence on TNG, way back in the day. The idea was that the Enterprise D would come across this guy who was sitting in hypersleep (or whatever they'd call it on Trek) and when they woke him up, the scene would go something like this:
MUDD:"Where am I?"
DR.CRUSHER: "You're on the starship Enterprise."
MUDD(incredulously):"Oh, great!"
Cool idea, right? It never got made, because the actor who played Mudd died. So we got the *ahem* "Outrageous Okona" instead.
Just your daily dose of useless Star Trek trivia. (I hear that there's a market for that stuff)
Since you really need to get those parts, why don't you communicate with your friend who's coming to visit you, get her to purchase the parts using her US credit card, have them delivered to her, then pay her in cash, or whatever when she gets to Brazil?
I know this doesn't answer the international CC question, but it may provide a solution for you in the short term. I am using a 233 P2, and I feel your pain!
Slashdot Mirror
Wesley Crusher said "shit"...
He just said "Fuck", too.
Har.
In one of his author's notes somewhere, Niven mentions that Sternbach's cover art for Tales of Known Space contains, somewhere, a very tiny Ringworld.
Wil, did you ever find it?
Yeah, but I had to take it to Rick, and have him point it out to me. It's sort of on it's side, if I recall correctly...
I wonder if any studio would make Ringworld, without screwing it up? Because you know what would happen: they'd make the first one, it would be a huge success, then they'd sell the rights for Engineers to Showtime, and it'd become a cheap, late night softcore spin off.
Are you at all disappointed that you didn't actually end up looking like that hunk of steroidal man-meat that Q briefly turned Wesley into in that one episode?
Am I the only person who thought it was weird that Wesley was turned into a blonde-haired, blue-eyed adonis?
I mean, look at me. I'm a scrawny geek, and I'll grow up to be a scrawny geek.
Or Richard Dreyfuss.
A much more revealing interview...
If you decide to read it, do so knowing that it was presented to me as comedy and satire, so I responded in kind.
Apparently, lots of people didn't get the joke, and I've been getting a ton of shit for it.
...why is he leaving exactly five earth years after he arrived? Does everyone in the universe schedule their travel based on earth time?
Things like this happen in SF all the time. We would like to stay away from an "Earth-centric" view of things, but the people paying to see this movie are from Earth, and it's easier for them to grasp an Earth year, than it is to grasp a Jovian year, or a k-paxian year. Ultimately, it really doesn't matter to the vast majority of the audience, and, as a filmmaker, you'd rather have your audience ponder your film's (hopefully) deeper meanings, not how long a year was.
We're Doomed.
Faster: The party will only last for 45 minutes.
Cheaper: Keeping with NASA policy, it will only cost 12 million dollars.
Smaller: It will take place in a closet in DC.
Ironic: The party will start off looking very good, but before anything truly cool can happen, it will mysteriously stop.
So is the controller going to be called "The Dvorak" or "The American Simplified"?
Do you have an account here ?
Yeah, I've had it for quite some time. I never put my name to it because I was afraid I'd automatically get modded down.
Have you ever posted here ?
Yeah. But not too often. My motto is "if you don't have something to say that's worth at least +1, don't say anything at all".
Have you ever submitted ?
Yeah.
Have you ever got a submission accepted ?
Are you kidding me? If I had a submission posted, that would make me cool, and that would begin the slow unraveling of the very fabric of space-time.
If this post isn't the poster-child for karma whoring, I don't know what is.
What I want is a national ID card powered by Microsoft.
If I get stopped by the cops, I just show it to them, and they are so filled with FUD that they let me off, scott-free.
Here is a pretty interesting photo tour that was made by some guys who, by their own admission, "violated federal law" to get inside and tour around one of these silos, when it was just a bunch of abandoned cold war concrete. It's nice to compare the this with the eBay photos...makes that 1.5 million opening bid seem a bit more reasonable. Oh, and you'd better hurry...there's only an hour left to bid on it.
Incidentally, I lived in Topeka for some time, and I got to go to one of these abandoned silos, back around 92 or 93...there was a freaky survivalist dude living there, surrounded by all his guns and barrels of water...and I got to go stand where, at one time, there was a ICBM, ready to go...remembering the cold war dominated world that I grew up in, it was very, very surreal.
I should think it'll come as quite a shock to Diane Warren that she's the most hated man in Star Trek
*whew* It's a relief that I won't have to give up my "Most Hated Man In Star Trek" badge, then...it's keeping the table level.
However, if she gets the "Most Hated Person In Star Trek" award, I'll have to give that one up...which is too bad. It's keeping the bees out of my kitchen.
I have always argued that opt-in is the fair way to go. Why should the burden of being left the hell alone fall onto me, the consumer?
And I don't know about you, but when I opt out, I feel like a bit of a heel: "Here's all my information, my email, my address, my phone number...now, please don't use any of this information, dear spammer."
I wonder if the day is not too far off when those of us who have opted out get on a big list of "people who've opted out" and get a mass "So, you like to opt out, eh?" mailing...
The FCC should go with opt in. It's for questions like these that "duh" was invented.
I loved "Enterprise". I loved it so much, I am actually going to write Berman and Braga a note, and tell them how amazing I thought it was...
Strangely, the only thing that I really hated was the theme song...I suspect that the guy who composed that is going to be the new holder of the "Most Hated Man In Star Trek" title...if he calls, I'll hand over the badge to him...I know I have it someplace.
I suggest, to anyone who feels the same way about the theme song, that you turn the volume down, and crank up Pink Floyd's "Learning To Fly". Not only is it a cooler song, but it goes very nicely with the visuals.
The best thing about "Enterprise"?
Two words:
Detox. Gel.
Don't look at me. I dropped out of Starfleet Academy before we studied this stuff.
I can tell you how the isolinear optical chips work, though.
Okay, I'm not the most objective individual on this subject, and I really didn't like the direction Trek went after Gene died, and the odds are, if you didn't like Voyager or DS9, you won't like Enterprise, because it's the same creative team.
However, before we premiered Next Generation, we were dismissed pretty much out of hand before anyone had seen a single episode...and we ended up running for 10 years, not sucking most of the time, IMHO.
So I'll be watching, excited as hell that there's new Trek on TV, and hoping against hope that it doesn't suck.
This audio is just amazing...in a week filled with despair and sadness, it's a welcome break to hear something so optimistic and uplifting. It reminds me of this record set I had when I was in college, called "I can hear it now". It was a 3 or 4 LP set of important events that happened in the 60s, narrated by Walter Cronkite. It had the "We choose to go to the moon" speech, the assassination of JFK, MLK, lots of stuff from Vietnam...but the thing that I played over and over again were the recordings from the Apollo missions. Something about that *beep* and the courage in their voices...the sense that I get, just from listening to them talk, was that every one of those men knew they were doing something incredible. I'm really glad this story got posted.
I loved LEGO as a kid. I spent countless hours making computers, houses, all manner of gun, and, of course, the ubiquitous robot.
Now that I have kids of my own, they play with LEGO, and I don't even recognize the toys I grew up with.
I mean, sure, it's cool to have the Star Wars sets and what not, and the little lego men look really cool and all, but where's the creativity? Unless you have serious cash to drop on the Mindstorms, the sets are so specialized that you can only make one thing out of them.
I think that Atollo is a paradigm shift in construction-based toys, returning the focus to the user's creativity, rather than ability to follow diagrams in an instruction book.
Here is the bottom line:
The Bad Guys don't play by the rules, anyway.
The government has been foaming at the mouth to install things like Carnivore, implement the DMCA, stop people from having PGP, etc. for years.
Guess what? If the feds backdoor encryption sold here in the US, The Bad Guys will get their encryption elsewhere. The only people who would be effected by these limitations on privacy are people like us, not The Bad Guys.
And, as has been pointed out before, but bears repeating: if laws are made in these emotionally charged times, they will never go away, because the politicians won't want to appear "soft on terrorism" the same way they don't want to appear "soft on drugs".
Katz makes good points, and this tragedy has forever changed our world, but let's hope, as another poster said, that cooler heads prevail.
If you don't like what a radio station is playing, listen to a different station.
...KROQ.
This is great in theory. However, in practice, it's not that simple. If you live in a city like Los Angeles, and you prefer "Alternative" music, your choices are KROQ and
I couldn't agree with you more. Here's my greatest fear: Resident Bush will see this as an opportunity to look "Presidential", and bomb "Them" back to the stone age, and figure out who "They" are later.
And all these comparisons to Pearl Harbor are just inflammatory. We have NO IDEA who did this, so we have NO IDEA who we should be retaliating against. Let's not lose our heads, people. We can be sure that the US will not let this go unanswered...but "Go W"?! Please.
Harry Mudd was supposed to make an appearence on TNG, way back in the day. The idea was that the Enterprise D would come across this guy who was sitting in hypersleep (or whatever they'd call it on Trek) and when they woke him up, the scene would go something like this:
Cool idea, right? It never got made, because the actor who played Mudd died. So we got the *ahem* "Outrageous Okona" instead.
Just your daily dose of useless Star Trek trivia. (I hear that there's a market for that stuff)
They already sent a tool up there. His name was Dennis Tito.
I know this doesn't answer the international CC question, but it may provide a solution for you in the short term. I am using a 233 P2, and I feel your pain!
Actually, it was "Yaaay." Without enthusiasm. Now you try it.
Better, better, but "Yaaay." From the back of the throat.
That's it!
Oh, you wanted an interesting comment? It's karma whoring in here.
"Karma whoring? What a stupid concept!"